The First Day Of School
by hat-and-goggles
Summary: [My entry for the Tiny Adventures fanzine] "Gah, I can't do it!" Lance screamed in frustration, flinging the school's copy of the Wonderful Wizard of Oz across the classroom. And here, Shiro thought teaching the gifted children's class would be easy.


"Gah, I can't do it!" Lance screamed in frustration, flinging the school's copy of the Wonderful Wizard of Oz across the classroom from the reading corner where he was sitting. "Why should we even learn reading stupid books anyway?! I'll just watch TV for the rest of my life!"

The small class immediately fell silent after the book made impact to the wall, mere inches away from Katie's face.

And here, Shiro thought teaching the gifted children's class would be easy. His gaze snapped up from the math tests he was supposed to be grading. This had happened before. Shiro had never seen it himself, but Lance's previous teacher had gone out of her way to warn him about the boy's outbursts. However, he hadn't expected it to happen on his first day. He quietly got up from behind his desk to pick the book up from the floor.

"Are you okay, Katie?" Shiro asked. "That must have been quite a scare."

"Only a little." The little girl smiled. "We're good."

"Alright. You guys can go back to what you were doing. I'm going to talk to Lance for a bit." The teacher said, his voice barely a whisper.

* * *

"Lance? Can I sit with you?" Shiro asked. A friendly, yet insecure smile on his face.

Lance seemed to think hard about the teacher's request, intensely looking up at him, before crossing his arms over his chest and giving him a curt nod.

The teacher smiled softly as he sat down on the pillow next to the boy.

"You know, I should be telling you that you're not supposed to throw the books here, but I think you knew that already." Shiro joked.

Lance only nodded, his eyes trained at the floor, as if he were expecting to be scolded.

"Hey, it's okay. You're not in trouble. I just want to know why you did it." Shiro told him, placing an encouraging hand on his shoulder.

"I don't know..." Lance sighed. "I guess I'm just angry."

"Well, what made you angry?"

" _I_ did. I've read the first page a hundred times now, but I still don't know what it says."

"Its okay, you know. It's not a bad thing if not very good at reading-" Shiro started, but was almost immediately cut off by Katie.

"That's not true!" She nearly shouted. "Um… oops, sorry Mr. Shirogane."

"No, please go on. It's my first day here, so I still have a lot to learn. I mean, about you guys, I like to think my teaching is just fine."

That managed to get a laugh from his students. Even Lance couldn't hold in a giggle.

"Pidge is right, though." The boy next to Katie, Hunk, spoke up. "Lance read Alice in Wonderland to us just last week. He can do it, maybe just not right now."

"Maybe he could do it last week because you two were quiet then." A boy with messy, slightly longer raven hair grumbled. Shiro had to mine his memory for the boy's name, since he hadn't spoken a single word the entire morning. Was it Kevin? No, there wasn't a Kevin in his class. Keith, maybe? Yeah, that sounded about right.

"Are you blaming us?!" Katie shouted.

"I'm just stating the facts." Keith glared.

"Okay guys, knock it off." Shiro said sternly. "I'm not having a fight in my classroom. Why don't we all gather around and quietly calm down while Lance reads us a chapter from the Wizard of Oz. And then we'll go back to our math problems."

Slowly, though, one chapter became two, which in turn became three, and Shiro watched and listened in pure awe as his other students helped out Lance when he hit a wall while reading.

Shiro jolted when the bell rang to signal the end of the day. The children surrounding him giggled before they got up to put on their coats and sling their bags over their shoulders. They said their goodbyes, but Lance stuck around a little longer. The boy quickly approached his teacher and hugged him tightly.

"Thanks, Mr. Shirogane. Today was great!" He said before running off to catch up with the others.

Yes, the four of them each had their individual quirks that might make the gifted children's class more difficult to teach sometimes, but Shiro was confident enough that he could make a positive impact on his students.

* * *

Author's note: Okay, looking back on the project, this piece was far too short, and it's definitely not as good as I could write it now (compared to 4 months ago, when this was finished). SO. If readers like this as a sort of preview of sorts, and there's enough demand, I'd be willing to expand on this and maybe add some more chapters with elementary school classroom shenanigans.


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